By

on January 28, 2015

Super Bowl Sunday is one of the two best food holidays of the year. When done right, Thanksgiving is still the tops in terms of combining good food with good football, but Super Bowl Sunday isn't bogged down by dry birds, unnecessary side dishes or the Dallas Cowboys.

If Super Bowl Sunday is the best day for food in sports, what is the best Super Bowl snack? It's a simple question with a seemingly endless number of delectable choices.

Blais not only has a number of restaurants across the country, but he's become an expert in the sport of competitive cooking, both as a frequent contestant and a judge. Who better, then, to help us pick the best Super Bowl food for your Sunday spread?

By

on January 25, 2015

What would be the NFL equivalent of Zuzu's Petals? TomTom's UGGs? And is the ball guy in New England named Clarence?

Moreover, what would the NFL look like if Bill Belichick wasn't around? How different would the last 15 years of football look if not for the contemptuous grouch in the cutoff sweatshirt?

What if Belichick wins the Super Bowl, looks at all the hundreds of media types from around the world asking him about football inflation percentages this week like it was some threat to national security and says, "I suppose it'd been better if I had never been born at all."

By

on January 13, 2015

We are spoiled this year. Not only has the NFL regular season been as spectacular on the field as it's seemed demoralizing and unsettling off it, but the playoffs have somehow been even more enticing to watch than the four months that preceded them.

Drama, comebacks, scandals—not in the court-of-law sense but rather in the "how-is-that-not-a-penalty-and-or-catch" sense—have become staples this postseason. Let's not forget that we've also been gifted some quarterback matchups we could only dream of in previous seasons.

Add in the controversy around the catch that wasn't for Dez Bryant, the hysterically confounding formations employed by Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots, the vastly overreported calf injury for Rodgers and the woefully underreported quadriceps injury for Manning, and the divisional round of the playoffs was as good as the game could possibly get.

By

on January 8, 2015

"Must-win" is such an overused term in sports, and I am certainly guilty of exacerbating the overuse of the term here, but there doesn't seem to be any other way to analyze the task in front of one of the brightest young players in the NFL today without using (read: overusing) it now.

Andrew Luckmust win against the Denver Broncos this weekend, not only to keep his team alive in the NFL playoffs—that's a reason every quarterback finds himself in a similar must-win situation this time of year—but to really start to earn the esteem he's been given after three years in the league.

The guy is great at his job, and his early-career numbers indicate he is on an upward trajectory that very few in the history of the league have ever attempted to navigate. One such signal-caller is the man on the other side of the field this weekend, and it's hard to expect Peyton Manning will be in too magnanimous a mood with his own playoff legacy still hanging in the balance.

In short, there will be no torch passed from Manning to Luck on Sunday, and the only way for Luck to advance on the path we all expect his career to go is to walk straight up to Manning and rip that torch right out of his hand.

By

on December 17, 2014

Let's be honest: It has been a tough year for the NFL. Well, attendance has been good and viewership is at an all-time high, but all the off-the-field stuff has really put a damper on...on...something. It's put a damper on something.

So how about some NFL-themed holiday cheer.

Each year we tirelessly scour the country for every NFL team's holiday card. These are without a doubt 100,000 percent real cards and not Photoshop creations I spent the better part of a week making. Real. Totally, good-tidingly real.

By

on December 8, 2014

Alabama. Oregon. Florida State. Ohio State. It's a final four any college football fan would dream of in the inaugural four-team playoff system. The College Football Playoff selection committee got it right, or they at least didn't get it wrong, and that decision between selecting Florida State, Ohio State, TCU and/or Baylor has made for some lively debate all across the country.

Four teams are better than two, sure, but is four better than…more?

The question the College Football Playoff committee is answering in the wake of its first football final four announcement is why they decided to include Ohio State over Big 12 competitors Baylor and TCU. The question they really should be answering today is: When do we get to eight, so we no longer have to have that debate and can, instead, see that decided on the field?

Four is good. Eight would be better. And look, I admit the system worked this season. The first year of the playoff system has given us the opportunity to see Nick Saban and Alabama go up against Urban Meyer and Ohio State in a game that will move the winner into a matchup against either Marcus Mariota and Oregon or Jameis Winston and Florida State.

By

on December 7, 2014

Landon Donovan is taking his ball, and his trophy, and going home. Forever.

In the 111th minute of a sloppy, grind-it-out MLS Cup final, MLS MVP Robbie Keane slotted home the cup-winning goal for the LA Galaxy, who defeated the New England Revolution 2-1 in extra time, earning the Los Angeles franchise its record fifth league title.

A jubilant home crowd unfurled its banners and tributes, celebrating another title with the class franchise in MLS, with the class player of a generation.

"Party at Donovan's," one banner read. I have a feeling the Galaxy will bring the cups.

By

on December 2, 2014

Since Sunday, a silent gesture has said more than any words possibly could, and no matter the intent from five players of the St. Louis Rams, the reaction—and subsequent national debate—is deafening.

There are people, otherwise reasonable Americans, who find what Stedman Bailey, Tavon Austin, Jared Cook, Chris Givens and Kenny Britt did on Sunday to be deplorable.

There are people who find what those five young men did to be offensive to the police, in direct support of those who chose to riot in the wake of the grand jury's decision in Ferguson, Missouri, in late November. We had a caller on our Bleacher Report Radio show this morning on SiriusXM suggest that members of the Rams simply, and silently, raising their hands in the air was akin to high-fiving a thug carrying a Molotov cocktail.

Hands up. It was a gesture, not a protest. It was a show of support for the community—their community—and not a directed knock at the hardworking police who have been assigned to protect the team, the stadium and that very community. For anyone to suggest otherwise is either missing the point of the display or purposefully changing the conversation to meet their own political agendas.

By

on November 20, 2014

Ray Rice was not a victim of NFL double jeopardy. Ray Rice committed a heinous, criminal act and has paid the price for it. Literally. Rice lost his job. He lost any chance at a paycheck for the foreseeable future. He lost any respect he had in the community. He lost a lot. And deservedly so. But he is not—repeat, not—a victim of double jeopardy.

He's a victim of triple jeopardy.

Having previously suspended him for two games, the NFL suspended Rice indefinitely on September 8, the same day the Baltimore Ravens cut him, despite team owner Steve Bisciotti going on record several times after the first video surfaced saying he would stand by the embattled running back.

Eight days after Rice was ousted from the NFL, the NFL Players Association filed a formal request for appeal on his behalf, suggesting that the league suspended the running back twice for the same offense. (Therein lies the double jeopardy claim.)

Edited By

Dan Levy

Dan Levy, National Lead Writer and host of The Morning B/Reakaway on SiriusXM's Bleacher Report Radio, has been writing and talking on the computer for quite some time. He has opinions he likes to share. He will do that in this space.
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